Earthborn (Homecoming) (34 page)

The sun was halfway to noon when the accusers arrived, along with their lawyer, a loquacious angel named kRo. It was forbidden for an angel to fly in the court, but kRo had a way of opening his wings and sort of gliding as he walked back and forth, building up passion in himself and in the audience. It made him seem at once larger and more graceful than his opponent,
and many human lawyers refused to take on cases that might put them head to head with kRo.

With the accusers in place and the gallery completely full, with hundreds more clamoring outside, pleading for imaginary spaces—“I’m not large! There’s room for me!”—Pabul entered, with a guard on either side. In the event of a mob action against the judge, these guards would hardly be much protection, though perhaps they might buy just enough time for the judge to flee into his chamber. Rather they were there to defend against the lone assassin. It had been a hundred years since a judge was murdered in open court, and longer than that since one was mobbed, but the protections remained in place. No one expected that this case would turn to violence, but it was more heated than most, and the controversy made the onlookers view the guards in a different light. Not just a formality, no. They were armed; they were large, strong humans.

No one from the king’s family was present. It had long been a tradition that if a royal person were present, he or she would sit beside the judge and, presumably, tell the judge the will of the king in the case. Thus from a trial attended by a royal person there could be no appeal. To preserve the rights of the accused, therefore, Ba-Jamim, Motiak’s father, had begun the tradition of having no family member present at any lower trials, so that the right of all parties to appeal a decision could be preserved. It also had the happy effect of increasing the independence and therefore the prestige of the judges.

Akma, however, came to watch, and his sister Luet came with him. They had arrived late enough that they secured seats only in the back, behind the accused where they could see no faces. But two close supporters of the accusers, who had seats on the front row where they could see everyone’s face, recognized Akma and insisted that he and his sister come down and take their places. Akma pretended to be surprised and honored, but Luet remembered how he had remained
standing at the back until he was noticed; he knew that seats were being held for him. And by supporters of the accusers. Akma had definitely taken sides.

Well, why not? So had Luet.

“Have you met her?” she asked.

“Met whom?” asked Akma.

“Shedemei. The accused.”

“Oh. No. Should I have?”

“A brilliant, remarkable woman,” said Luet.

“Well, I don’t suppose anyone would have noticed her if she was a fool,” he answered mildly.

“You know I was at her school with Mother and Edhadeya when the book of charges was delivered,” said Luet.

“Yes, I’d heard.”

“She already knew the charges. Isn’t that funny? She recited them to Husu before he could read them off.”

“I heard that, too,” said Akma. “I imagine kRo will make something of that. Proof that she was aware of her lawbreaking, that sort of thing.”

“I daresay he will,” said Luet. “Imagine charging her with treason for running a school.”

“Oh, I’m sure that charge was just to make the whole thing more notorious. I don’t think Father’s little puppet judge will even allow that charge to be heard, do you?”

Luet cringed at the malice in Akma’s voice. “Pabul is no one’s puppet, Akma.”

“Oh, really? So what he did to our people back in Chelem, that was of his own free will?”

“He was
his
father’s puppet then. He was a child. Younger than we are now.”

“But we’ve both passed through that age, haven’t we? He was seventeen. When I was seventeen, I was no man’s puppet.” Akma grinned. “So don’t tell me Pabul wasn’t responsible for his own actions.”

“Very well, then,” said Luet. “He was. But he changed.”

“He sensed the way the wind was blowing, you mean. But let’s not argue.”

“No, let’s do argue,” said Luet. “Which way was the wind blowing back in Chelem? Who had the soldiers there?”

“As I recall, our young judge had the command of a gang of digger thugs that were always ready to whip and claw women and children.”

“Pabul and the others risked their lives to stop the cruelty. And gave up their future in positions of power under their father in order to escape into the wilderness.”

“And come to Darakemba where, to everyone’s surprise, they once again have positions of power.”

“Which they earned.”

“Yes, but by doing what?” Akma grinned. “Don’t try to argue with me, Luet. I was your teacher for too long. I know what you’re going to say before you say it.”

Luet wanted to jab him with something very hard. When they were younger and quarreled, she would pinch together her thumb and first two fingers to form a weapon hard and sharp enough for Akma to notice it when she jabbed him. But there had been playfulness in it, even when she was most furious; today she didn’t touch him, because she was no longer sure she loved him enough to strike at him without wanting to cause real injury.

A sad look came across Akma’s face.

“Why aren’t you happy?” she said tauntingly. “Didn’t I say what you expected me to say?”

“I expected you to jab me the way you used to when you were a brat.”

“So I’ve passed out of brathood.”

“Now you judge me,” said Akma. “Not because I’m wrong, but because I’m not loyal to Father.”

“Aren’t you loyal to him?”

“Was he ever loyal to me?” asked Akma.

“And will you ever grow out of the hurts of your childhood?”

Akma got a distant look on his face. “I’ve grown out of all the hurts that ended.”

“No one’s hurting you now,” said Luet. “You’re the one who hurts Mother and Father.”

“I’m sorry to hurt Mother,” said Akma. “But she made her choice.”

“Didul and Pabul and Udad and Muwu all begged for our forgiveness. I forgave them then, and I still forgive them now. They’ve become decent men, all of them.”

“Yes, you all forgave them.”

“Yes,” said Luet. “You say that as if there were something wrong with it.”

“You had the right to forgive them for what they did to you, Luet. But you didn’t have the right to forgive them for what they did to me.”

Luet remembered seeing Akma alone on a hillside, watching as Father taught the people, with the Pabulogi seated in the front row. “Is that what this is all about? That Father forgave them without waiting for your consent?”

“Father forgave them before they asked him to,” whispered Akma. She could barely hear him above the roaring of the crowd, and then she could only make out his words by watching his lips. “Father loved the ones who tormented me. He loved them more than me. There has never been such a vile, perverted, filthy, unnatural injustice as that.”

“It wasn’t about justice,” said Luet. “It was about teaching. The Pabulogi only knew the moral world their father had created for them. Before they could understand what they were doing, they had to be taught to see things as the Keeper sees them. When they did understand, then they begged forgiveness and changed their ways.”

“But Father already loved them,” whispered Akma. “When they were still beating you, when they were still torturing me, mocking us both, smearing us with digger feces, tripping me and kicking me, stripping me naked and holding me upside down in front of all the
people while they ridiculed me—while they were still doing those things, Father already loved them.”

“He saw what they could become.”

“He had no right to love them more than me.”

“His love for them saved all our lives,” said Luet.

“Yes, Luet, and look what his love has done for them. They prosper. They’re happy. In his eyes, they
are
his sons. Better sons than I am.”

This was uncomfortably close to Luet’s own judgment of things. “There’s nothing they’ve achieved, nothing in their relationship with Father that wasn’t available to you.”

“As long as I admitted first that there was no difference in value between the tortured and the torturer.”

“That’s stupid, Akma,” said Luet. “They had to
change
before Father accepted them. They had to become someone else.”

“Well, I
haven’t
changed,” said Akma. “I haven’t changed.”

It was the most personal conversation Luet had had with Akma in years, and she longed for it to continue, but at that moment a roar went up from the crowd because they were bringing in the accused, protected by eight guards. This was another old tradition, introduced after several cases in which the accused was murdered in court before the trial was even completed, or snatched away to have another sort of trial in another place. These guards still served that practical purpose—an in-court murder of an accused person had happened not ten years before, admittedly in the rather wild provincial capital of Trubi, at the high end of the valley of the Tsidorek. Not that anyone expected Shedemei to be in danger. This was a test case, a struggle for power; she herself was not regarded with particular passion by those accusing her.

“Look at the pride in her,” said Akma, shouting right in her ear so he could be heard.

Pride? Yes, but not the cocky sort of defiance that some affected to when haled before the court. She carried herself with simple dignity, looking around her
calmly with mild interest, without fear, without shame. Luet had thought that no one could be charged and brought to trial without feeling at least a degree of embarrassment at being made a public spectacle, but Shedemei seemed to be no more emotionally involved than a mildly interested spectator.

And yet this trial did matter to her; hadn’t she deliberately provoked it? She wanted this to happen. Did she know what the outcome would be, the way she knew in advance the charges against her?

“Has Father told you what the puppet is supposed to decide?” Akma shouted in her ear.

She ignored him. The guards were moving slowly through the crowded gallery, forcing people to sit down. It would take a while for them to silence the crowd—these people wanted to make noise.

She wanted to personally slap each one of them, because their noise had stopped Akma from baring his soul to her. That
was
what he was doing. For some reason, he had chosen this moment to . . . to what? To make a last plea for her understanding. That’s what it was. He was on the verge of some action, some public action. He wanted to justify himself to her. To remind her that Father was the one who had first been guilty of monstrous disloyalty. And why? Because Akma himself was preparing his own monstrous disloyalty. A public betrayal.

Akma was going to testify. He was going to be called as a scholar, an expert on religious teachings among the Nafari. He was certainly qualified, as Bego’s star pupil. And even though within the family and the royal house it was well known that Akma no longer believed in the existence of the Keeper, it wouldn’t stop him from testifying about what the ancient beliefs and customs had always been.

She laid her hand on Akma’s arm, dug into his wrist with her fingers.

“Ow!” he cried, pulling away from her.

She leaned in close to him and shouted in his ear. “Don’t do it!”

“Don’t do what?” She could make out his words only by reading his lips.

“You can’t hurt the Keeper!” she shouted. “You’ll only hurt the people who love you!”

He shook his head. He couldn’t hear her. He couldn’t understand her words.

The crowd at last was quieter. Quieter. Till the last murmur finally died. Luet might have spoken to Akma again, but his attention was entirely on the trial. The moment had passed.

“Who speaks for the accusers?” asked Pabul.

kRo stepped forward. “kRo,” he said.

“And who are the accusers?”

Each stepped forward in turn, naming himself. Three humans and two angels, all prominent men—one retired from the army, the others men of business or learning. All well known in the city, though none of them held an office that could be stripped from them in retaliation by an angry king.

“Who speaks for the accused?” asked Pabul.

Shedemei answered in a clear, steady voice, “I speak for myself.”

“Who is the accused?” asked Pabul.

Shedemei answered in a clear, steady voice, “I speak for myself.”

“Who is the accused?” asked Pabul.

“Shedemei.”

“Your family is not known here,” said Pabul.

“I come from a far city that was destroyed many years ago. My parents and my husband and my children are all dead.”

Luet heard this in astonishment. There were no rumors about this in the city; Shedemei must never have spoken of her family before. She had once had a husband and children, and they were dead! Perhaps that explained the quietness that Shedemei seemed to have in the deepest place in her heart. Her real life was already over; she did not fear death, because in a way she was already dead. Her children, gone before her! That was not the way the world should be.

“I wandered for a long time,” Shedemei went on, “until finally I found a land of peace, where I could teach whatever children were willing to learn, whose parents were willing to send them.”

“Digger-lover!” someone cried out from the gallery.

The time of noise had passed; two guards immediately homed in on the heckler and had him out of the gallery in moments. Outside, someone else would be let in to take his place.

“The court is ready to hear the accusations,” said Pabul.

kRo launched at once into a listing of Shedemei’s supposed crimes, but not the simple unadorned statements that had been in the book of charges. No, each charge became a story, an essay, a sermon. He built up quite a colorful picture, Luet thought—Shedemei defiling the young human and angel girls of the city by forcing them to associate with the filthy ignorant children of diggers from Rat Creek. Shedemei striking at the ancient teachings of all the priests: “And I will call witnesses who will explain how all her teachings are an offense against the tradition of the Nafari—” That would be Akma, thought Luet.